The Englishman's laugh followed him, boisterous and grossly thick, and
Jan moved on,--wondering how much longer the half Cree and Williams and
the factor's son would listen to the things that this man was saying of
the most beautiful thing that had ever come into their lives.
"It ees truth, I swear, by dam'--thees honor of what he calls the 'Beeg
Snows!'" persisted Jan to himself, and he set his back to the factor's
office and trudged through the snow.
When he came to the black ledge of the spruce and balsam forest he
stopped and looked back. It was an hour past bedtime at the post. The
Company's store loomed up silent and lightless. The few log cabins
betrayed no signs of life. Only in the factor's office, which was the
Company's haven for the men of the wilderness, was there a waste of
kerosene, and that was because of the Englishman whom Jan was beginning
to hate. He stared back at the one glowing window with a queer thickening
in his throat and a clenching of the hands in the pockets of his
caribou-skin coat. Then he looked long and wistfully at a little cabin
which stood apart from the rest, and to himself he whispered again what
he had said to the Englishman. Until to-night--or, perhaps, until two
weeks ago--Jan had been satisfied with his world. It was a big,
passionless world, mostly of snow and ice and endless privation, but he
loved it, and there was only a fast-fading memory of another world in his
brain.
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